In October 2024, I was looking for a new walking project (see 2021’s project) to keep motivated, and joked to a friend that I could try visiting every one of the City of Toronto’s 1,520+ parks. Impossible, right?
The more I thought about it, though, the more it seemed like a great goal for me. I could make a Google map of every park (and parkette), exporting from the City’s Parks and Recreation Facilities Open Data, then tracking my walks with the Strava app on my phone. For “proof,” I would take pictures of the official park name signs. How fun would it be to design walks linking parks together, exploring new parts of the city?
Answer: very fun. I went ahead and did just that (admittedly a bit obsessively), all by public transit, starting October 26, 2024, and reaching 1,000 parks less than a year later on October 5, 2025.
I’ve just decided to wrap up the project, having visited 1,024 parks, as the remaining 500+ are in the city’s east and west ends and would require over two hours of travel there and back, which is not sustainable. (Want walking, not sitting!)
I’m grateful for the adventures (and no injuries), in all weathers, and only wish I’d taken more notes and photos of my finds (evidence of previous use as a quarry, water management infrastructure, a deer skeleton, a Giant Hogweed, so much Indigenous history as in L’Amoreaux Park) (perhaps elves?), experiences (watching salmon in the Don River and Highland Creek), and lessons learned (the Golden Retrievers in the Humber River Valley that turned out to be blonde coyotes).
Kudos to the City for mercifully adding temporary port-a-loos during the summer.
I saw too many encampments of unhoused people.
A friend described this map of all parks visited as my being “All over Toronto like a rash,” and now I can’t unsee it.
Here are the corresponding walk tracks created over the course of the project, mostly in Toronto’s central area but also some far east and far west.
For “proof,” to keep myself honest, I took photos of any City of Toronto official signs indicating the property names. Hundreds and hundreds of sign photos later, here is a small sample collage.
(A Very Few) Best of Parks Awards
- Best Park Name: Main Sewage Treatment Playground. Really, that’s its name.
- Best Park Rejuvenation: Peter Street Basin Park. See CBC article It was swamped with garbage. Now there are swimmers in this Toronto lake basin, describing the incredible work of Dr. Steve Mann and his University of Toronto students.
- Best New Park: Biidaasige Park, at the mouth of the Don River.
- Best Tobogganing Hill: Withrow Park
- Most Hilarious Unfair but Also Kinda True Google Review: Joseph Tough Park (Davenport Road west of Avenue Road).
- Most Terrifying Playground Equipment: Saddletree Park
- Best Species Encountered: Chicken of the Woods, Glen Stewart Ravine (my photo on left, stock photo on right).
- Favourite Photo: HTO Park, February 2025
I could have written a book, but the moment has passed, so I’m just going to leave it at this. Toronto citizens and visitors have an incredible natural (and infrastructural) resource in the city’s parks (trails, rivers, ravines, forests, waterfronts, gardens, playgrounds, beaches, etc.) and we must not take these treasures for granted.
